Data Recovery: 7 Deadly Signs of a Crashed Hard Drive

How do you know you need data recovery to recover your data? How do you know your drive is dead? Sometimes your hard drive may experience failure or suddenly crash without warning, but there are usually clues. The most obvious sign of a bad hard drive are clicking, grinding or scraping noises. What are the other signs? --They may not be so obvious.

The following deadly signs can be disastrous...especially if it's your drive!

1. You Get the Message: "Operating System Not Found"

If you get the message, "Operating System Not Found", this could mean that you have been infected with a virus, your operating system files have been corrupted or you have some hardware issue with your computer. It may also be your hard drive has crashed.

2. Clicking or Grinding Hard Drive

Has your hard drive started making clicking sounds? Is it starting to grind and scrape? When you start hearing clicking sounds, it is a sign of impending hard drive failure. Immediately back up your important data. In fact, even if you don't hear clicking, it's still a wise idea to backup your drive. Spending some time backing up today will prevent data loss tomorrow!

3. Your Computer Keeps Rebooting

Although this could be a virus that has affected your important system files, it could also be a symptom of hard drive failure. If you are able to do a virus scan then this may fix the problem. Try running the Windows CHKDSK utility program. If the problem remains your drive could be dead.

4. Blue Screen of Death

The blue screen of death is a sign that there is a very serious hardware failure. If the blue screen is accompanied by weird noises or clicking sounds, there is a good chance your hard disk is dead or dying. If you haven't made a good backup in a while it may be time to explore hard disk data recovery or data undelete options.

5. "Drive Not Formatted" Computer Message

Nothing can be more frustrating than this message: "The disk in drive C is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? The computer only gives you one choice-- "YES". But there is no way you want to delete all of your data! Your drive is not being recognized because some crucial data has been corrupted or there is physical damage. See if you can try the drive on another computer. Using a data recovery tool is also a good choice.

6. Your System Freezes and Hangs

A hanging system may be the sign that your computer has frozen due to hard drive failure. You know you've crashed when your mouse doesn't work and everything stops. You may also see a message saying a program has performed an "illegal operation". In combination with some of the above symptoms this may indicate a drive problem.

7. You Get the Message: "Primary Drive or Device Not Found"

This can be frustrating when your computer won't even recognize your hard drive. It may be only a loose hard drive interface cable or power cable. It may also be a virus. Is your hard drive still spinning and you know you are virus free? Then your data on your hard drive could be toast!

Finally...

In summary, if you encounter any of the problems I've outlined above, then I would recommend that you turn your computer off. Why? Further computer use could damage your hard drive platters and make your data recovery impossible. It is always a good idea to jot down what happened just before the crash then start researching a data recovery service or data recovery software.